Heavy cotton pants and jeans have become popular casual wear. Wrinkles are common when such pants are laundered and dried, whether they are hung from a clothes line or they are tumble-dried by machine. The manual step of hand-ironing normally follows drying in order to press out the undesirable wrinkles.
Commercial laundries have long had equipment to stretch garments while drying them in order to prevent wrinkles from forming in the first place. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,263,877 to Radford, U.S. Pat. No. 3,433,396 to Swartz, U.S. Pat. No. 3,892,047 to Muller-Scherak, U.S. Pat. No. 4,303,183 to Schlemon and U.S. Pat. No. 4,475,673 to Ochiai all disclose drying processes having gas-permeable, tubular or torso-shaped bags mounted inside garments to be dried. Pressurized air is used to inflate the bags in order to stretch wrinkles from damp garments draped over them. Bags are permeable in order to permit air to flow through both the bags and the garments in order to dry them. The bags act principally to control the air flow so that bag inflation is achieved regardless of garment permeability or openings in the garments draped over the bags.
Similar to commercial systems, U.S. Pat. No. 3,298,578 to Shields discloses a foldable, torso-shaped, perforated hanging bag, which may be useful in the home for garment drying when the user supplies an air source. The primary benefit of such a system is the elimination of the need for post-drying operations, such as hand ironing, for removing wrinkles.
What has been lacking in the garment finishing art is a simple process, and an inexpensive, portable device specifically designed for individuals to dry their pants in a substantially wrinkle-free manner, at home or wherever they may travel. It is an object of the present invention to stretch and dry pants of the jeans and heavy cotton type by simultaneously inflating and passing air through them without the need for a bag or other stretching device. It is another object of the present invention to fit a drying device to any pant waist size with a simple adjustment. With this portable invention, individuals may dry pants substantially wrinkle-free anywhere they desire, as long as they can provide a source of pressurized air, and a support for the device.